What do you get if you cross the old Kowloon Walled City with the Internet? Can't imagine? William Gibson's latest novel Idoru may help you find out.
The book has caused a bit of a stir worldwide, particularly for its invention of a computer-generated - 'virtual' - pop star. And in the fantastic way that boundaries between truth and fiction blur, we now have what you might call a real virtual singer in the form of Kyoko Date, just as computer-generated as Gibson's invention but who is doing pretty well in the very-real record shops.
Gibson is famed in science-fiction circles for coining the term 'cyberspace' in 1981. Now he has added to his growing oeuvre with this futuristic tale.
Akin to his award-winning novel Neuromancer, Idoru tells of a potential future heavily laden with technological gadgetry where real and virtual characters seek to gain fortunes, find their perfect match, or simply be left alone.
The action in Idoru takes place in two equally labyrinthine worlds - a perpetually dark and drizzly post-earthquake Tokyo, and the ever-expanding realm of the internet. Gibson's protagonists drift through a dystopic world of nightclubs, dingy restaurants, and love hotels of a sort owing something to Ridley Scott's Bladerunner and the rest to the film noir world of Raymond Chandler.
The principal character, Colin Laney, is a computer nerd everyman, a somewhat harmless but terminally uncool type, who drifts from one job to the next.